Lost Elf
by SerenityFalconNormandy
Summary: Inspired by the Lost Elf theme from Trespasser, and events that happened in my own life the week I played the DLC. Love, loss, and the tragedy that is Fen'lath Lavellan and Solas's romance.
1. The Fall

_Looking back, it had been slow at the start. The first time he had spoken after softly chuckling at her question was the first step to the edge of the cliff. The willingness to answer her questions, even when she mocked him for not being Dalish was the second. Learning to Fade-Step, his patience and encouragement carrying her forward just as surely as the twisting of magic and the Fade around her. Each little moment slowly moved her closer and closer, until the shattered future in Redcliffe. Seeing Solas so broken, so sick, yet willing to lay his life on the line for her to escape with Dorian and possibly prevent the madness from coming to be…_

 _That's when the slow steps became a dance, slow circles around each other, spinning towards the seemingly inevitable. A true dance shared in the wake of closing the Breach brought them closer, then the discovery of Corypheus's true identity and the fall of Haven looked like it would tear them away from each other for good. His call pulled her through the storm, the sheer determination to see him again moving frozen feet forward when all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep._

 _Planning by veilfirelight, she slid her hand into his, and he didn't pull away. Instead, he threaded his fingers through hers as he described the path they would need to take to safety. The beauty of the fortress he laid at her feet took her breath away, even in the shambles it was. More steps in the dance as the keep was cleared, and slowly frescoes went up on the walls of the rotunda. A conversation started in candlelight ended in a dream, and when their lips touched and they breathed each other in, Fen knew that's when she'd truly danced too close to the cliff edge and fallen._

 _The fall left her stunned, shaken. If she was unsure of being able to go back to Lavellan before, she knew she never could now. They had barely accepted her, and who knew what Deshanna would think of a non-Dalish lover, Dreamer or no? He seemed the only anchor to herself as she drifted between the human world and her own, until the Plains. Humans screaming for an elf to save them on soil that cried out with the blood of her people, spilled long ago. Wisdom turned to Pride by lying mages after weeks of torment, and her Solas sought solace in solitude after Wisdom was freed._

 _He returned to her, worn and weary, while she burned with the fire lit within her on the Plains, the compliant elf scorched away by the fury of what her people had lost. In the bright, cold air of the Frostbacks, he admitted that he too had fallen, and called her his heart._

Cole held Fen'lath as she slept, tears streaking down her freckled cheeks that were bare of vallaslin. He wanted to make her forget, to relieve the pain of the memories haunting her dreams. The Anchor flared, and Fen shifted with a little noise. An answering flutter brushed at Cole, discomfited by the Anchor and making itself known. He looked, and gave a sad, watery smile, placing a gentle hand on Fen's stomach.

"Hello, little wolf cub."


	2. The Box

All that was left of his effects fit into one wooden box, but for the frescoes on the walls. Fen'lath wrapped the last of the brushes and pigments in the dropcloth he had sometimes used as a blanket and placed it on top of the clothing, books, and knick-knacks that were the only evidence that Solas had ever existed.

Fen drew in a shaky breath, and placed a final item in the box. One of the Dalish women from the clan in the Exalted Plains had sent along a beautiful blanket made from halla wool gathered from the previous year's fawns, soft and light, perfect for a baby. She ran her fingers over the branches of Mythal's tree that patterned the cream background in lovely navy blue, the empty ache in her chest echoing the hollow feeling in her belly. The cramping and bleeding had stopped over a month ago, and her Abelas'Solas rested under a new sapling in _Terasyl'an Tel'as's_ gardens.

It hurt to think that perhaps, if she'd been able to carry him for just three or four more weeks, he would have had a chance. The Anchor sparked in her palm, and her whole hand tensed around it, the muscles cramping in protest. A pained hiss escaped Fen and she attempted to stretch it out. Tears welled in her eyes.

Glaring at her palm, she considered going to the armory and trying her hand at cutting the cursed thing out of her, once and for all. As far as she was aware, all the rifts left after Corypheus's defeat had either been closed before she realized she was pregnant, or had collapsed and disappeared shortly after the final battle. All the damned Anchor was good for now, it seemed, was reminding her of Solas, and reminding her that it had killed her son.

If she had only known she was pregnant _sooner!_ But how was she to know that Solas would disappear like that after Corypheus was slain and the orb shattered? The glorious week that their son had to have been conceived, when they were traveling to Crestwood, was only a month before that battle. That was too soon for anyone, even the best Spirit Healers, to tell a woman had fallen pregnant. Fen was confident that if Solas had known she was with child, he never would have left. He would not leave his child, a bond between the ancient _elvhen_ and the elves of the modern world.

Fen hunched over the box, the pain in her palm subsumed by the ache that swelled and radiated from her chest. Her shoulders shook as she tried to hold in the sobs. She had sworn she was finished crying when she had buried her heart with the little boy who would have been the living image of his father, down to the pointed chin with the dimple in it.

Teeth bit into her lower lip, and a strangled noise escaped her. Though Josephine had quietly warned her, she didn't want to acknowledge that it was likely Solas was never coming back. There had been no response to the letters sent out begging him to come save their child. He had most likely entered Uthenera again, and she would never see him except in her dreams. Fen fell to her knees, forehead against the side of the box, and made a liar of herself as she wept, sobbing Solas's name into the echoing rotunda.


	3. A Whisper

In the Fade, even a scream could come out as a whisper.

He had managed to keep himself from checking up on Fen'lath. If he kept visiting her in her dreams, or did more than ensure she was alive through his spies, Solas knew he would lose his resolve, set aside his work or have her brought to him. He could not bring his _vhenan_ into this. She was born of this world, and the magics he had to work with would surely kill her if she was too close while he studied and tweaked, tried to find a way to preserve as many of the innocents as he could.

That did not stop him from counting the days. Five and a half months since he had last heard her voice and passed close enough to smell her hair. Six and a half months since the last time his lips had touched hers. Solas startled when the contact for the spy in Skyhold burst into his chamber. The woman stuttered out that he must visit the fortress Eluvian and view the events of two weeks prior in the Fade. He intended to wave her off, but froze when she said it involved the Inquisitor.

His Fen was not dead, he knew that much. Solas knew he would have felt it if his _vhenan_ had died. And yet… and yet. He turned and strode through his Eluvian, steps short and clipped as he made his way to the one that exited into the ancient part of _Terasyl'an Te'las_ , a single chamber carved into the bedrock a mile below the current fortress. One could only access it by Eluvian. The window looked out on the waterfall and valley below, and lit a sleeping couch preserved by a spell older than the Veil. Solas laid down, and slipped into the Fade version of the human-built fortress.

He found the echoes quickly. The members of the inner circle that had remained in Skyhold were clustered in the main hall, casting worried glances at the door to Fen's chambers. Bull thundered past, carrying a cauldron of steaming water and slamming open the door. Now that the heavy Brecilian oak door was open, he could hear Fen screaming in pain. Solas's stomach twisted. Had she truly been so badly injured? He followed the echo-Bull up to Fen's chamber. Fiona was standing next to Fen and wiping her face with a wet cloth, murmuring soothing words to her. Fen herself was holding onto one of the bedposts and shaking, nightrail soaked through with sweat. The elven mage Charger, Dalish, had a stack of cloth compresses folded and quickly dipped one in the steaming water and handed it to the older elf kneeling behind Fen.

Solas felt his knees give out as the elf, who was obviously her father, ordered her to push and raised the nightrail. She squatted, and her shriek tore through his soul as it rose, then trailed off. There was no cry from small lungs breathing for the first time. Her father wrapped the too-small child, helped his daughter through the rest as she sobbed, begging her little boy to move, to breathe. The echo of the Anchor flashed in her palm, and Solas understood what had happened to her son. _His_ son. _Their son._ Only Solas could survive bearing the Mark for an extended time, and the Mark was not kind to an unborn child. One who was half his blood, and half not...

In the Fade, even a scream could come out as a whisper.


	4. Empty

He went through the motions, but Solas had no heart or desire for his work. It had been lost two terrible weeks before, when he had gone through one of his Eluvians to check on his _vhenan_ for the first time since Corypheus fell. When he had left Skyhold, he had been so sure, so certain, that simply reassuring himself that she was alive and well through his spies was the only thing to be done. It would have been a weakness and a distraction to check on her himself by using the hidden fortress Eluvian, he thought.

What tragedies his pride had wrought, over and over. He ran his hands over his scalp, looking at the maps and letters from his spies that he was meant to be reviewing for his next move, but he couldn't muster any motivation to keep going. All he could hear and see was Fen'lath sobbing as their son was wrapped in the blanket that would be his shroud, and the heartrending pleas for their child to move or breathe.

His beautiful, wonderful, brave, _vhenan_ had gone through it all without him. He had ordered his scouts to leave the letters she left at the ruins where they lay. He was Solas and Fen'Harel. Of course he knew _so much better_ than his heart, didn't he? It would be better for her to have no contact, no chance that his presence or the magics he was weaving would destabilize the Anchor before he could find a way to remove it without killing her.

A paltry excuse. He couldn't trust himself to see her again, that her pleas might turn him from the path he must take as she almost had before. How every plan of his turned to ash at his touch… it had deprived their son of the chance to be saved from his father's folly. Feeling it all well up in him, Solas snarled and swept all off the table. Maps, letters, orders, sketches of Fen he'd hidden in the piles all scattered like a flock of parchment birds.

He moved quickly around the table, gathering up the sketches. They stretched from when he first joined the Inquisition and got her permission to draw her to the present. Small moments that weren't fitting for his frescoes, both in style and content.

A loving finger traced over one he'd done sometime between Redcliffe and closing the Breach, when Fen and Dorian were becoming closer. Her face had been unmarred then, though the scars earned by her bravery in Haven had done nothing to detract from the beauty he saw in her. It had been the free, open joy on her face he had captured, her face turned up to the sun as she and her Tevinter mage had debated some mundane thing or another, likely Dorian's opinions on her 'appalling' footwear.

Shuffling parchment, he focused on another, done in the moonlight of Orlais at Halamshiral. Fen wanted to be under the stars to dream with him, and had fallen asleep before he completed his evening ablutions. Head turned to the side, hair a dark tumble around head and shoulders with one lovely little pointed ear peeping through the locks trailing down her face and neck. The curl of a delicate hand nudged up against her cheek, and full lips parted in the absence of tension. She was the very image of relaxed and untroubled. The sleep couch dragged onto her balcony wasn't truly meant for two people, but they had made it work.

Parchment rustled again, and the sketch done from memory after Crestwood moved to the top of the pile. That beautiful, terrible moment after their last kiss, when Fen had been gazing into his eyes with such adoration, the smile for him pulling the corners of her mouth up, freckles and scars no longer hidden by the markings of an unwitting slave. He had ruined her happiness and his moments later, even as he set himself back on the path he was duty-bound to take for her and The People.

Solas set the stack of parchment down, not trusting that he wouldn't crush the precious drawings. Palms spread flat on the table, for the first time in many, many ages, tears slipped down his cheeks. He wept for the son he would never know, for his beloved, for the future that might have been slipping away through his own arrogance, history repeating. When the tears stopped, he dried them with the scarf Fen had knit him. The rich royal blue halla wool absorbed them all, like they had never been.

He moved around the table to start picking up everything else. Inside, he was hollow and empty.


End file.
